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long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so;
if not, let them that should reward valour bear the sin upon
their own heads. I'll take it upon my death, I gave him
this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would
deny it, 'zounds, I would make him eat a piece of my 150
sword.

Lan. This is the strangest tale that ever I heard.
Prince. This is the strangest fellow, brother John.
Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back:
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

[A retreat is sounded

The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours.
Come, brother, let us to the highest of the field,
To see what friends are living, who are dead.

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[Exeunt Prince of Wales and Lancaster Fal. I'll follow, as they say, for reward. He that re- 160 wards me, God reward him! If I do grow great, I'll grow less; for I'll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do. [Exit

SCENE V. Another part of the field

The trumpets sound. Enter the KING, PRINCE OF WALES, LORD JOHN OF LANCASTER, Earl of Westmoreland, with WORCESTER and VERNON prisoners

King. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.
Ill-spirited Worcester! did not we send grace,
Pardon and terms of love to all of you?
And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary?
Misuse the tenour of thy kinsman's trust?
Three knights upon our party slain to-day,
A noble earl and many a creature else
Had been alive this hour,

If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne

Betwixt our armies true intelligence.

Wor. What I have done my safety urged me to; And I embrace this fortune patiently,

Since not to be avoided it falls on me.

5

ΤΟ

King. Bear Worcester to the death and Vernon too: 15 Other ofenders we will pause upon.

How goes the feld?

[Exeunt Worcester and Vernon guardad

Prince. The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw The fortune of the day quite turn'd from him,

The noble Percy slain, and all his men

20 Upon the foot of fear, filed with the rest;
And falling from a hill, he was so bruised
That the pursuers took him. At my tent
The Douglas is; and I beseech your grace
I may dispose of him.

King

With all my heart.

Prince. Then, brother John of Lancaster, to you This honourable bounty shall belong:

Go to the Douglas, and deliver him

Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free:
His valour shown upon our crests to-day

30 Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds
Even in the bosom of our adversaries.

Lam. I thank your grace for this high courtesy, Which I shall give away immediately.

King. Then this remains, that we divide our power. 35 You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland

40

Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed.
To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scroop,
Who, as we hear, are busily in arms:

Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales,
To fight with Glendower and the Earl of March.
Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,
Meeting the check of such another day:
And since this business so fair is done,
Let us not leave till all our own be won.

[Exeunt

NOTES

Dramatis Personæ. The following brief sketches of the historical characters of the play are intended to indicate how far Shakespeare abides by, and how far he departs from, historic truth as viewed in the light of modern historical criticism. The chief authorities consulted are J. H. Wylie's History of England under Henry IV and the Dictionary of National Biography.

King Henry IV (1367-1413). Reference has already been made in the Introduction (p. xiv) to the changes made by Shakespeare in King Henry's age at the time of the Percy rising, while the king's earlier career may be traced in Richard II. After his accession to the throne in the October of 1399, and the death of Richard in January, 1400, Henry was chiefly occupied in restoring order to the kingdom. The Welsh expedition against Owen Glendower, undertaken in the autumn of 1400, ended disastrously, and subsequent expeditions were scarcely more satisfactory. The contrast between his own failure to subdue Glendower and the success of the Percies against the Scots at Humbledon (Holmedon) Hill in September, 1402, was very striking. In the three years which elapsed between the death of Richard II and the opening scene of our play the king had grown very unpopular. He had little money at his disposal, and the attempts of his officers to obtain supplies without paying for them had aroused the ill-will of the people. Riots broke out in 1402, and rumours were circulated that Richard was still alive. On February 7, 1403, the king married a second wife, Joan, the daughter of Charles the Bad of Navarre, and widow of John, fourth Duke of Brittany. Shakespeare, perhaps in order to accentuate Henry's position of loneliness, does not introduce Joan into his play, but it is probably to her that the prince refers when he says in ii. 4: "Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him back again to my mother". The outbreak of the Percy rebellion followed within a month of his marriage. Shakespeare keeps fairly closely to historic truth in stating the causes of that rebellion, though he makes little of Holinshed's references to taxes and tallages", the imposition of which by the king had

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incensed both the Percies and the people. Shakespeare, as stated elsewhere, has somewhat depreciated the king's personal prowess in the battle of Shrewsbury, but his account of Henry's preparations for the battle and of the attempts made by him to settle the dispute without bloodshed is substantially

correct.

Henry, Prince of Wales. Born in 1387, Henry was only seventeen at the time of the battle of Shrewsbury. He had remained in England during the time of his father's banishment, King Richard taking him under his charge. On his father's coronation he was knighted and created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester. He was with his father in his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Glendower in the autumn of 1400, and remained behind at Chester. In April, 1401, we find him advancing into Wales in the company of Hotspur, and securing the submission of Merioneth and Carnarvon. A little later, Henry Percy, Earl of Worcester, was appointed his tutor —a fact of which Shakespeare makes no mention. At the time when Shakespeare represents him as frequenting the Eastcheap tavern, he seems to have been campaigning in Wales, having been appointed as commander of the king's forces against the Weish insurgents on March 7, 1403. Shrewsbury was his headquarters, and here his father joined him on the eve of the battle. He fought bravely on that occasion, but there is no evidence that Hotspur fell by his hand.

With regard to the excesses of the prince's youth, upon which the later chroniclers insist, and which became indeed an accepted tradition, little definite information is obtainable. That these excesses and his subsequent conversion were exaggerated is certain, but there is sufficient evidence to show that the tradition was not entirely unsupported by fact. Elmham, the contemporary biographer and panegyrist of Henry V, confesses in his Vita et Gesta Henrici Quinti that "when not engaged with Mars he found time for the service of Venus"; and frequent references are made by other contemporaries to the change that came over him at his accession. Mr. J. H. Wylie, in his History of England under Henry IV (vol. iv, p. 91), summarizes the matter in the following words:-" For though he had his serious and superstitious moods, in which he would hear nothing that sounded to vice, yet there is evidence enough that the traditional stories of the wildness of his youth are not without some basis of fact, and that there were times when he was a truant to chivalry, losing his princely privilege in barren pleasures and rude society".

John of Lancaster (1389-1435) was the third son of Henry IV. Knighted at his father's coronation in 1399, he was made Constable of England in 1403. We have no knowledge that he was present at the battle of Shrewsbury, nor does

Holinshed mention him in this connection. On the outbreak of hostilities in 1405 he joined the Earl of Westmoreland in the campaign which ended in the capture of Archbishop Scroop on Shipton Moor. (See 2 Henry IV.) Soon after the accession of Henry V he was created Duke of Bedford, and on the king's departure for the campaign in France was appointed lieutenant of the kingdom. On the death of Henry V he was left in charge of the realm, and bore an active and resolute part in the civil and military transactions which occupied the period of Henry VI's minority. (See 1 Henry VI.) It was a troublous and in many ways a disastrous period in English history, but Bedford's policy was singularly sound, and his character courageous and unselfish. He died at Rouen in 1435.

Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland (1364-1425), was one of the most important of the north-country barons of the time of Henry IV. Richard II created him Earl of Westmoreland in 1397, but he joined the banner of Bolingbroke on his landing at Ravenspurgh in 1399, and on the accession of the new king he was appointed Marshal of England. Shakespeare's account of the part he played in the Percy rebellion is fairly accurate, as is also the later account (2 Henry IV) of his capture of Mowbray and Scroop on Shipton Moor in 1405. On the accession of Henry V he joined that king in his French campaigns, and every reader of the play of Henry V will remember that it was in reply to Westmoreland's wish before the battle of Agincourt

O that we now had here

But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

-that the king delivered his famous Crispian speech.

Sir Walter Blunt, or Blount, who appears in our play as the loyal supporter of Henry IV, had in early manhood accompanied the Black Prince and John of Gaunt on the Spanish expedition of 1367. He married a Spanish lady after the campaign was over, and was somewhat closely bound up with the English relations with Spain in the succeeding years. In 1398 John of Gaunt granted to Sir Walter and his wife an annuity of 100 marks as a reward for their labours in his service. Sir Walter represented Derbyshire, where he had an estate, in the first parliament of Henry IV, and held the post of standard-bearer at the battle of Shrewsbury. Shakespeare's account of his death at the hands of Douglas, who mistook him for the king because of the resemblance of his armour to that worn by Henry, is in accordance with the accounts given by contemporary chroniclers.

Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester (circ. 1344-1403), was the vounger brother of the Earl of Northumberland. He took

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